Student study skills

This is the first report from a new team initiative, show and tell sessions within the Learning Technologies Team. Judith is the first member of the team to bite the bullet and show us what she has been doing for a particular faculty project. We plan to record the outcomes of the sessions in some form. This may be a video, podcast or in this case, a blog post ;-)

Judith Jurowska responded to a request at an Arts Faculty Learning and Teaching Committee meeting to put together a duo course for students to learn study skills. She started from faculty documentation to produce a word cloud and found that the main areas that came through were:

• Information gathering
• Analytical ability
• Referencing
• Essay writing
• Time management
• IT Skills

With help from the library and some of the department, Judith has put together a range of materials from existing content and from the web. Rather than re-invent the wheel, Judith took advantage of existing resources online. The materials now need some ownership from the academic staff in the faculty.

As a team, we think these materials could be equally useful for Sciences and Health and Social Science students. There is also the suggestion that the materials might work well in a wiki, or that a wiki could be added to the course.

Judith is ensuring that her work compliments and draws on projects undertaken by the library (providing library and information literacy tools), as well as those taking forward the Durham Award (a scheme to give students recogntion for transferable skills and non-academic activity). When finished and signed off, we would consider pushing out to colleges and tutors to promote.